Today the Education Department released long-awaited details on a plan to hold colleges accountable for their performance on several key indicators, and officials said they'll be seeking public comment on the proposals through February. [...]

Two other possibilities on the list for outcomes are grad-school attendance rates, and loan-repayment rates. That last metric has already been put into place as the "gainful employment rule" for for-profit colleges, which are suing to stop it.
— npr.org

We'd like to hear from you: What predicted implications may the newly announced College Ratings System have on business, culture and education at Schools of Architecture in the U.S.? View full entry »

This week, the U.S. Department of Education will release data on the percentage of borrowers who have defaulted on federal student loans over the last three years. Schools with high rates of default face consequences. [...]

Is default the student’s burden? Or the institution’s? And the federal government doesn’t always consider a would-be borrowers’ credit risk the way private lenders can.
— marketplace.org

Related:Architects Laud Introduction of Bipartisan National Design Services Act As Way to Cut Spiraling Student Loan DebtArchitects Support Students' Call for Pro Bono Work in Exchange for Loan ReliefObama only 8 years out of student loan debt #dontdoublemyrate View full entry »

Traditionally, young people have energized democratic movements. So it is a major coup for the ruling elite to have created societal institutions that have subdued young Americans and broken their spirit of resistance to domination.
— FILMS FOR ACTION

In the darkness of the passive and compliant society we are living in, the article by Bruce E. Levine offers some clues to why it is like this. Are we now "WHATEVER PEOPLE?" View full entry »

Late last week, Chilean police arrived at Santiago’s Centro Cultural Gabriela Mistral and removed a white bin of gray ash — allegedly all that remained of $500 million worth of student debt notes.

In the video, which went viral last week in Chile, Papas Fritas confessed he had recently stolen the documents from the for-profit Universidad del Mar. Then he set them ablaze in a defiant, brazen act of art.
— washingtonpost.com

[Cooper Union], which announced last April that it would charge undergraduate students tuition for the first time, released figures on Friday that showed overall applications were down this year by just over 20 percent. [...]

The new figures indicate that the admission rate nearly doubled, from 7.7 percent last year to 14.4 percent this year, which still places Cooper Union among the most selective schools in the country.
— The New York Times

The freshmen class of Fall 2014 will be the first in Cooper Union's history to pay tuition. It remains to be seen whether Cooper Union's reputation overtime will falter, as quality considerations are matched against tuition rates and student debt, and students are given fewer options to pursue... View full entry »

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) today committed to timely passage of the National Design Services Act (NDSA), which will give architecture students the same relief from crushing student loan debt, which is already granted young lawyers, doctors and others – in return for community service.
— aias.org

"Indeed, enthusiasm for such legislation knows no bounds on the campuses of architecture schools and elsewhere among the emerging professionals community. One young architect, Evan Litvin of Philadelphia, has launched an online petition that enlists the support of architects nationwide for speedy... View full entry »

Daniel Toole is a 28-year-old architect in Seattle who plans to attend Harvard’s master’s program in urban design. But instead of paying his way with graduate student loans, he is trying to raise money by selling a slice of his future earnings to investors.
— nytimes.com

He needs $80,000, even after scholarships and grants. Mr. Toole wants to finance a big chunk of that through a new company called Pave, which connects people like him with “backers.” If he reaches his goal and raises $30,000 from Pave investors, he will pay them 7 percent of his... View full entry »

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) and the American Institute of Architecture Students (AIAS) today called for Congress to pass legislation that includes architecture school graduates in the same programs that offer other graduates loan debt assistance if they donate their services to their communities and elsewhere.
— aia.org

The AIA/AIAS initiative comes as both President Obama this past weekend and likely Republican presidential nominee Mitt Romney today urged Congress to head off a scheduled increase in student loan interest rates this July. Also today, the AIAS released a survey of almost 600 architect school... View full entry »

For the first eight years of our marriage, [Michelle and I] were paying more in student loans than what we were paying for our mortgage. So we know what this is about.

And we were lucky to land good jobs with a steady income. But we only finished paying off our student loans—check this out, all right, I’m the President of the United States—we only finished paying off our student loans about eight years ago.
— Barack Obama